Everything you need to know about common English questions, Intermediate English grammar

1. QUESTION FORMATION
Intermedio 2

2. INVERSION SUBJECT/VERB
 With modal verbs, including “will”, “would” and
“shall”:
Ex.: Could you lend me 1 million euros?
Would you accept a job for €300 a month?
 With the verb “to be”:
Ex.: Are you crazy?
 With “have” in the perfect tenses:
Ex: Have you ever seen “Breaking Bad”
 With “have got”:
Ex.: Have you got 1million euros?

3. Adding an auxiliary
 “Do/does” in the present tense, before the
subject:
Ex.: Do you like the English class?
Does he have a million euros?
 “Did” in the past simple, before the subject:
Ex: Did she really meet George Clooney at his
wedding?

4. NEGATIVE QUESTIONS
 Often express surprise:
Ex: Why didn’t you come to the English class
yesterday?
 Often used when you expect somebody to agree
with you:
Ex.: Isn’t the English teacher simply fantastic?

5. QUESTIONS AND
PREPOSITIONS
 In questions with verbs followed by prepositions,
the preposition is placed at the end:
Ex: What are you talking about?
 Often we just use the question word and the
preposition:
Ex. I’m studying English. What for?

6. QUESTIONS WORDS AS
SUBJECTS
 No auxiliaries are added in the present simple or
past tenses to make the following distinction:
 Question word as subject:
Ex.: Who killed the teacher? A student killed
him.
Subject Subject
 Question word as direct object:
Ex: Who did the teacher kill? He killed a
student.
Object Subject Object

7. INDIRECT QUESTIONS
 Questions within other questions
 The order is Subject+Verb (no inversion):
Ex.: Could you tell me where EOI Carabanchel
is?
Subject Verb
 Auxiliaries “do”, “does” or “did” are not used:
Ex.: Do you know where he works?
Do you remember what the teacher said
yesterday?
 We use “if” or “whether” in YES/NO questions:
Ex.: Do you know if/whether the English
teacher is very strict?